


Not-So-Empty Town

by turbomun



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:37:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turbomun/pseuds/turbomun
Summary: Ralsei doesn't know how to have a sleepover.





	Not-So-Empty Town

Kris told their mother that they were sleeping over at Susie’s house. Susie told her parents that she was sleeping over at Kris’s house. Toting their duffle bags, they hurried through the dusk, down the streets of Hometown, and finally met just in front of the school.

“Oh man,” muttered Susie, her toothy grin flashing even in the low light. “This is gonna be awesome. Kris, _please_ tell me that you got the keys. I’ve been looking forward to this all day…”

Kris reached into their duffel bag, shoving their hand down past the pajamas and socks and clothes for tomorrow, and pulled out the master key to the school – their mother’s spare.

“Oh _man_ ,” repeated Susie, her grin stretching across her whole face now. “I knew you had it in you, Kris! You must’ve felt like a real badass snatching that from your mom, huh?”

Kris shrugged. Yeah, technically they’d stolen the key, but it wasn’t like they were going to steal or break anything inside the school. They were just here to do exactly what they had told their mom that they’d be doing: having a slumber party with Susie.

It just so happened that a couple of other, unmentioned friends would be joining them…

* * *

Being in the school when it was vacant didn’t even feel weird anymore. They’d done it so many times that the silent halls now felt more peaceful than foreboding. As for the dark closet, and the tumble down into the cliffs, that was all like a roller coaster ride – if anything, it was like the beginning of the coaster, where your car was creeping up the track and you felt anticipation, cold and prickly, fluttering at the base of your throat. It was the prelude to an adventure, the time when you knew that the best was still to come.

“Race you to town, Kris!” called Susie as soon as they’d both hit the ground.

They both took off running. Susie was faster, but Kris had better stamina – Noelle had been prodding at them to join the track team – and the end result was that the two of them were almost evenly matched. Susie would pull ahead, fall behind, then pull ahead again, skidding down the frozen waterfall formations while whooping and cheering into the world around her. None of the creatures in this place gave it a second thought.

As they approached Ralsei’s castle, Lancer started running to meet them, but didn’t get very far before Susie skidded to a halt before him. “Hoho!” he declared. “The clowns _finally_ arrive! What took you so long?!”

“Something about having to sneak past our parents ‘cause they wouldn’t like the idea of us hanging out in an empty school all night.” She folded him into a headlock and gave him a noogie; his tongue flopped out of his mouth happily. “But now we’re here—”

“And the first official Fun Gang sleepover can begin!” He wriggled his way out of her grasp. “C’mon! Let’s go tell each other secrets!”

“You’re getting way ahead of yourself!” called Susie as he took off again.

The three of them reached the door, and then Ralsei was there, ushering them into the castle – no voluminous cloak this time, just his regular robe with his hat tipped up to reveal a little of his face – and as the heavy doors clunked shut behind them, Kris took a deep breath. More than they had since their brother took off for college, they had a strong, sincere feeling of coming home.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Kris and Susie had changed into their pajamas, at Lancer’s request; he insisted that it wasn’t a slumber party if they weren’t “ready to slumber.” Susie had an oversized T-shirt and ragged lounge pants; Kris was wearing one of the cutesy button-down PJ suits that their mother tended to buy for them; and Lancer himself had a blue fleece onesie, covered in a repeating motif of spades.

The castle looked, mostly, just like Kris had imagined it would. Archways and high ceilings; elaborate decorative carvings peering from the stone walls like ghostly faces behind a veil; stained-glass windows inlaid with the Delta Rune itself. And since Ralsei lived here, the elegant furniture was free of dust and neatly arranged, with lamps adding a cozy yellow glow to each room.

“Nice place you got here,” commented Susie, flopping out on Ralsei’s bed like she owned the place. “Mind if I move in? It’s way better than the frickin’ trailer where I live.”

Ralsei looked at her out of the corner of his glasses, settling two bowls of snacks in the middle of the floor. “But Susie, wouldn’t your family start to worry about you?”

She snorted. “I guess.”

When she declined to elaborate, Ralsei straightened up, evidently deciding that asking her for details didn’t suit the mood of their sleepover. “O-okay, everybody! I’ve designed an itinerary to give us the most optimal slumber party experience possible!” He reached into the pocket of his robe and withdrew a neatly written checklist. “We’ve already changed into our pajamas, so…that’s step one, check. Now it’s eight o’clock, which means it’s time to eat snacks while giggling excessively. At eight forty-five, we go downstairs and you can help me bake a cake! At nine-fifteen, pre-bed tea. And then a pillow fight at ten—”

Lancer perked up as if someone had jabbed him with a pin. “Pillow fight!” He reached across Susie and snatched up the closest pillow, which happened to be a throw cushion with decorative embroidery that Ralsei had probably done himself. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

“The pillow fight will be at ten o’clock,” explained Ralsei. “It’s not—”

He was cut off by Lancer flinging the pillow directly at him; it struck him squarely in the face, nearly knocking off his glasses. Susie howled with laughter.

“Pil-low fight! Pil-low fight!” chanted Lancer, pumping his fists rhythmically in the air.

“I’ll give you a pillow to fight, you little brat splat!” declared Susie, still laughing. She grabbed the pillow that Ralsei presumably slept on each night and started whomping Lancer with it, throttling herself so that the blows caused more annoyance than pain. And even then, Lancer was apparently too delighted to be annoyed, because he immediately started laughing and running around, giving her a moving target to focus on.

Eventually, Lancer hopped off of the bed and darted behind Kris; Susie wasn’t dissuaded. “In that case, I’ll just wail on _both_ of you!” she growled, teeth flashing in mock-threat, and suddenly Kris was struggling not to laugh as Susie drove them down on their knees with the power of expertly aimed pillow-strikes. Not one to be dissuaded, they stretched out and just managed to grab hold of the throw cushion that had hit Ralsei, flinging it at Susie for a surprise attack.

“Oooooh!” shouted Lancer dramatically, jumping up and down. “That’s one point for Team Blue Person!”

“Are you switching sides, you little traitor?!” Susie bellowed, and refocused her efforts on him – this time discarding the pillow and just flat-out picking him up. She held him upside-down, shaking him lightly and pretending to snarl, and his laughter rang deafeningly around the bedroom.

Ralsei watched all of this with a slightly defeated look on his face, resetting his glasses on his snout. “I-I guess we can check off the pillow fight now…”

Kris frowned at his tone.

However, once Susie had dropped Lancer and the two of them set to work gobbling up the snacks, Ralsei seemed to come back to himself a bit. Kris noticed, as they snuck a few handfuls here and there, that he never even attempted to eat anything; he never even tried to grab something. Oh, well, maybe he’d had dinner before they came over.

When the bowls were nearly empty, he timidly spoke up. “So…how about that cake…?”

“Hang on, Dr. Toothpaste!” exclaimed Lancer, jabbing a finger in Ralsei’s direction. “You haven’t changed into your pajamas yet!”

Ralsei leaned back a little, as if he were afraid that the finger was about to start spewing bullets at him. “I-it’s not time for bed yet, though. I can change later—”

“Pa-ja-mas! Pa-ja-mas!” Once again, Lancer began to chant, and once again Susie joined in. But when Ralsei shrank down, looking completely lost and intimidated, Kris found themself caught between confusion and concern. On the one hand, something was obviously making him uncomfortable; on the other, all he was being asked was to put on his pajamas. What was so demanding about that? It wasn’t like he had to change in front of his friends or anything…

“Okay, enough!” he finally shouted over the din, in a high, tremulous voice.

Lancer’s tongue poked out eagerly. “You’ll put on your pajamas now?!”

“I-I…I can’t.” Ralsei dragged his hat down, concealing most of his face. From behind the brim came his muffled, embarrassed confession: “I don’t _have_ any pajamas.”

Susie snorted derisively, then either didn’t acknowledge or didn’t notice the look that Kris shot in her direction. “Wait, seriously? Then what do you sleep in?”

“Just my normal clothes,” mumbled Ralsei. “Except I take off my glasses so they don’t get ruined. And my hat too, usually.”

Lancer tilted his head thoughtfully. “Oh. Then…take them off!”

While Susie practically wheezed with laughter at the accidental innuendo, he pounced on Ralsei, snatching off his glasses with one hand and his wide-brimmed hat with the other. Ralsei reared back with a squeak that made Kris struggle to hold back their giggles.

“There!” proclaimed Lancer. “Now you look nice and cozy!”

Ralsei blinked owlishly, pale and vulnerable in the absence of his hat’s ever-present shadow. “Hang on! I-I need my glasses if we’re going to make that cake! Otherwise I won’t be able to see the ingredients properly!”

“Oh, yeah.” After a second, Lancer passed back the glasses, then started to chant for the third time that night: “Cake! Cake! Cake!”

Ralsei stifled a sigh, but a tiny smile was working its way across his uncovered mouth. His guests were interested once again in the itinerary he’d drawn up, so everything was all right…for now.

* * *

Kris didn’t say anything, but they rather suspected that having Susie and Lancer in a kitchen environment was not going to work out particularly neatly, and it took all of five minutes for this theory to be vindicated.

Everything was okay at first. Ralsei lined up the ingredients for red velvet cake on the counter, eggs and milk and flour and so on all arranged in an orderly row, and he started to explain his recipe to his friends. He broke the eggs himself (smart move on his part, Kris thought) and measured out all the ingredients. Then:

“I want to mix!” Lancer piped up.

Ralsei smiled at once, albeit in a slightly strained way, like an admonished pupil striving for some semblance of approval. “Okay, sure! Here, just take this whisk…”

Lancer began to spin the batter in slow, clumsy circles. Susie was not impressed. “It’s never gonna get mixed if you go that slowly. Put your back into it!”

“Oh…like this?” He twirled the whisk slightly faster.

“No, like this!” She snatched the bowl and whisk away from him, stirring so rapidly that her arm became a pinkish-mauve motion smear. He clapped appreciatively, clearly more enthusiastic about this lesson than he’d been about Ralsei’s.

Ralsei, on the other hand, looked slightly alarmed. “Um, Susie, I think that’s too—”

“Don’t tell me how to live my life!” she bellowed, somehow stirring faster still.

At that point, the centrifugal force became too great, and the batter began spraying in long arcs around the kitchen. Kris scrambled back; Ralsei did too, but not quickly enough, and he got splattered in the bare face. Lancer, on the other hand, was delighted to remain in the splash zone, opening his mouth to catch flecks of batter like snowflakes.

Finally, Susie dropped the whisk into the empty bowl, declaring: “Now _that’s_ how you mix!”

Lancer laughed, seemingly not noticing that all of the batter had been wasted. “It looks like blood!”

“Yeah – thick, sugary blood!” agreed Susie. She leaned down and swiped her tongue across Lancer’s cheek, and he burst into giggles.

Ralsei, who appeared to be going through the five stages of grief over his ruined cake, suddenly winced. “Ew! That’s – really not sanitary in the kitchen…!”

But of course, the other two didn’t listen to him. Soon they were running wild, trying to wipe batter on each other’s clothes, or trying to splatter the mess even further. Lancer chased Susie around the whole kitchen, screaming that he wanted to lick her, too, all the while leaving a trail of red-velvet footprints in his wake.

Kris watched them for a while, bemused…and then they stiffened. “Guys!” they hissed.

Susie trundled to a halt. “What is it?”

Kris pointed at the kitchen door – which was now dangling open. Ralsei had just run out.

* * *

They found him a few floors up, on a terrace that overlooked the kingdom…if you could classify a few vacant houses and shops as such. From up here, everything was so dark that it was difficult to tell that the shapes across the ground formed a town. The only lights came from the windows of the castle itself, twinkling softly.

Kris approached him, almost close enough to brush against him, but not quite. “Hey.”

He didn’t say anything.

They cleared their throat, continuing awkwardly. “Sorry about…your kitchen.”

After a moment, Ralsei uttered a sigh, so low and sad that it made their heart twinge. “I’m not upset about the kitchen,” he murmured. “Well…okay, I’m a _little_ upset about the kitchen, but mostly I’m upset because…I messed up.”

“ _You_ messed up?” echoed Kris, arching their brow.

He bobbed his head shamefacedly. “I really thought that my itinerary would be a good idea. We could fit all of the classic sleepover activities into our schedule tonight – but I should have known that Susie and Lancer weren’t going to be interested. I just wanted everyone to have fun. I wanted this night to be special…”

“But we _are_ having fun,” interjected a voice behind them – Susie, peering perplexedly from behind her bangs. “I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to go to sleep at somebody else’s house!”

“And I think tonight _is_ special,” added Lancer, peeking from behind her, his tongue flopping out of his mouth.

Kris nodded. “I agree.”

Ralsei barely looked comforted. “I should have known better. But…I’ve never had a slumber party before…”

“Hey, me neither,” said Susie.

“Me neither!” chirped Lancer. “My dad would’ve never let me!”

“I haven’t had a slumber party before, either,” Kris said. Unless you counted sharing a room with their brother, and they didn’t. That wasn’t a slumber party, it was just…life.

“Really?” Ralsei blinked. “But…you guys all seemed so sure of yourselves!”

Susie shrugged. “We’re just making it up as we go along. We weren’t smart enough to do a whole schedule…we’d need a toothpaste doctorate for that.”

That made everybody giggle, and the giggling made the tension ebb away, vanishing like curls of mist into the darkness above the castle. Smiling, Kris placed their hand on Ralsei’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t have pajamas or that you like to schedule things,” they told him. “The most important part of a slumber party is hanging out with friends. And you’re the best at that.”

He beamed at them, too delighted to speak.

“Can we make the cake now?” asked Lancer. “For real? I promise I won’t let Susie lick me this time!”

“And I won’t stir so hard,” Susie added.

“And I’ll help you clean up the kitchen,” offered Kris.

“Of course!” exclaimed Ralsei. “I’ll show you how to make the best red velvet cake…oh, I mean, the best sugary blood cake!”

And as the four of them headed back down the stairs, their peals of laughter danced off of the balcony and into the night, filling up the entire empty town.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this around late 2018 for a charity fanzine, and I originally hadn't intended to make it available elsewhere (i.e. you had to buy the zine to get it). Then there was this massive campaign to try and make physical copies of the zine, one of the project organizers took the money and ran, and to make a long story short, most of the writers and artists on the project were defrauded just because they wanted a physical copy of their work.
> 
> In the interest of transparency, the rest of us on the zine are now offering everything for free. This fic is one of many, and if you want the rest, you can grab it here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gm1od1ppcfoa3vr/AADkBRmb97HAdILzHVpbNKbva?dl=0


End file.
